State v. Mount, A--111

• Decision Date: 17 June 1959
• Docket Number: No. A--111,A--111
• Citation: 30 N.J. 195,152 A.2d 343
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. James Alfred MOUNT, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Page 195

30 N.J. 195

152 A.2d 343

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. James Alfred MOUNT, Defendant-Appellant.

No. A--111.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued April 20 and 21, 1959.

Decided June 17, 1959.

John B. Stone, Jr., Elizabeth, argued the cause for appellant (Thomas C. Mahon, Elizabeth, attorney).

Cuddie E. Davidson, Jr., Westfield, argued the cause for respondent (H. Douglas Stine, Union County Prosecutor, Plainfield, attorney).

The opinion of the court was delivered by

JACOBS, J.

The defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree without any recommendation of life imprisonment. He was sentenced to death and appealed to this court as of right under Article VI, Section V, paragraph 1 of the Constitution.

The body of Ruth Lowe Petrosky was discovered during the evening of August 7, 1957 in the cellar of the apartment building where she had lived with her husband and children. She had been brutally stabbed to death and her injuries, which had apparently been inflicted by means of a thin blade, included 13 or 14 stab wounds in various parts of her body. She was fully clothed and there was no evidence suggesting that there had been any attempt to assault her sexually. Members of the Union County Prosecutor's office and the Plainfield police department questioned tenants in the building, and early during the morning of August 8 they were admitted to the Mount apartment by the defendant's father George Mount. The defendant, who was then sleeping in the apartment, was awakened and taken to the Plainfield police headquarters where he was questioned and confessed that he had killed Mrs. Petrosky. He identified an 11 1/2-inch homemade knife which had been found in the Mount apartment as the lethal weapon and he told the police officers were they would find, as they did, the bloodstained trousers he had worn at the time of the stabbing. He signed a written statement during the morning of August 8 and a clarifying supplemental statement during the afternoon of the same day. In these statements he gave substantially the following story:

He is 18 years of age and his formal education consisted of eight years of grammar school. He served in the United States Navy from March 5, 1956 to July 25, 1957 and holds a general discharge. His parents are divorced, he has been living with his father, and he has not seen his mother for about three years. He is employed as a stock boy at the Mayfair supermarket in Plainfield. Mrs. Petrosky's apartment was across the hall from the Mount apartment and he had a nodding acquaintance with her. On August 6 he passed Mrs. Petrosky and as he ran up the stairs she said something which he 'did not quite catch.' As he came down the stairs he again passed her and said, 'I'll see you later honey,' to which she replied 'Yes, O.K.' When he came home from work, he knocked on her door and said, 'How about now.' She then said she was only 'kidding' and he returned to his own apartment. He had inferred that she wanted to have intimate relations with him and when he thought about the matter he 'got mad' but then 'forgot about it.' On the following day while at work he again thought about the matter, 'got mad again' but then 'forgot about it.' He went home about 6 P.M., started watching television, 'started thinking about it again, and I guess I got pretty damn sore.' When he heard Mrs. Petrosky leave her apartment, he picked up a bag of trash, and a knife which was lying on the kitchen table, followed her to the cellar where she had gone to put trash in a garbage can, stabbed her as she was about to come up the cellar stairs and 'just went nuts and kept stabbing her.' He 'did not try to have any sexual relations' not did he rip 'any of her clothes.' He returned to the Mount apartment, washed the knife, changed his trousers, walked to the 'railroad bank' where he threw his trousers away, went to the movies, and later went to sleep until awakened by the police officers.

In due course the defendant was indicted for murder, counsel was assigned to him, and the matter came on for trial. In his opening, counsel for the defense did not deny that the defendant had caused the death of Mrs. Petrosky in the manner set forth in the statements but stressed the defendant's youth and unfortunate history and the alleged lack of a planned killing as grounds for avoidance of imposition of the extreme penalty of death. Counsel stated that he would offer background evidence, including testimony indicating that when the defendant was five years old his father entered the United States Army; that his mother then 'took up with a paramour' and lived in open adultery; that when the defendant was 16 years old his mother sent him to live with his father, who 'had taken up himself with another woman,' and that the defendant's father was 'a man of loose morals, who flaunted his immorality in the presence of this boy in the apartment in Plainfield.' During the course of the trial defense counsel called the defendant's mother as a witness and asked whether her children, including the defendant, had been placed in an orphanage. The State's objection to this question was sustained by the trial judge, who ruled that 'evidence with reference to past life and antecedent background is irrelevant to the issue of guilt or innocence, and under settled authority is properly excluded from the jury's deliberation in determining whether or not to recommend life imprisonment.' See State v. Wise, 19 N.J. 59, 115 A.2d 62 (1955); State v. Barth, 114 N.J.L. 112, 176 A. 183 (E. & A.1935). Additional questions addressed to the defendant's father, mother and grandmother, and seeking to elicit information as to the defendant's background, were consistently excluded by the trial court.

The defense called Dr. Garber, a duly qualified psychiatrist, to testify as to whether the defendant was capable of premeditation at the time he stabbed Mrs. Petrosky. See State v. Close, 106 N.J.L. 321, 324, 148 A. 764 (E. & A.1930); but cf. Fisher v. United States, 328 U.S. 463, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 90 L.Ed. 1382, 166 A.L.R. 1176 (1946). In the course of his examination of the defendant, Dr. Garber had obtained a history which he stated was 'customary as part of the psychiatric evaluation.' He was not permitted to state what the history was nor was he permitted to testify on the basis thereof. However, the trial court did permit him to give the following answer in response to a hypothetical question grounded exclusively on the evidence admitted during the trial:

'I believe that there are a number of very significant facts that have come out of this hypothetical question, which leads me to the conclusion that this defendant was not a well person, as reviewed by the information in this skeletal background, which leads me to the conclusion that as a result of the behavior described that I don't believe he was capable of premeditating this crime. The recitation of what he did in enacting it, what he did following it, is very significant, and for these reasons I do not believe that he was reacting in what we in psychiatric terms would say is the behavior of a normal person.'

During cross-examination Dr. Garber noted that he found it very difficult to exclude the information he had obtained from his examination of the defendant from the matters set forth in the hypothetical question, and that he would be in a position to answer more readily if he had the opportunity of utilizing all of the information available to him; he testified that 'I don't think this man was medically insane to the point that he was committable to an institution, but I do say he underwent a disturbance of his thought processes that he was unable to premeditate'; and he expressed the feeling 'that all the acts that are contained in this continuing episode' are those of a person 'very emotionally ill' though 'not legally insane.' Dr. Flicker, a duly qualified psychiatrist called by the State, testified that according to the facts in the hypothetical question the man had 'the ability to premeditate and to plan' and that he saw nothing in the hypothetical question that would indicate lack of ability to premeditate, whereas much of it indicated 'that he would have the ability to premeditate.' He testified that he had never examined the defendant and had considered only the matters set forth in the hypothetical question.

At the outset of the trial it was recognized by all that it was vital that there be selected an impartial jury having no conscientious scruples against capital punishment and no prejudices against the substitution of life imprisonment therefor. See Funk v. United States, 16 App.D.C. 478, 485 (1900); certiorari denied, 179 U.S. 683, 21 S.Ct. 916, 45 L.Ed. 385 (1900); Snell v. United States, 16 App.D.C. 501, 506 (1900); United States v. Puff, 211 F.2d 171, 183, 48 A.L.R.2d 540 (2 Cir., 1954), certiorari denied, 347 U.S. 963, 74 S.Ct. 713, 98 L.Ed. 1106 (1954). Accordingly, there was extensive Voir dire examination by the prosecuting attorney, who concentrated on excluding jurors who were opposed to the infliction of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and the defense attorney, who concentrated on excluding jurors who were opposed to the substitution of life imprisonment as the appropriate punishment. When prospective juror Bloom was called, 58 veniremen had been examined, 18 had been excused because of their opposition to capital punishment, and 8 had been chosen to serve as jurors. The prosecuting attorney asked Mr. Bloom, as he had consistently asked all of the previous veniremen, whether 'in a proper case where the facts warrant and under the charge of the law by the court would you vote for a verdict of murder in the first degree, knowing that as a result of that verdict the defendant would be put to death?' Cf. State v. Bunk, 4 N.J. 461, 468, 73 A.2d 249, 19 A.L.R.2d 1316 (1950), certiorari denied, 340 U.S. 839, 71 S.Ct. 25, 95 L.Ed. 615 (1950...